The MonkCast

Anne Gentle's Docs Like Code was first published in 2017; the third edition came out in December 2022. Anne (who is also Global Leader, Developer Experience at Cisco) joins Kelly and Kate to talk docs-as-code/docs-like-code processes, how the landscape has changed in the last five years, resources for getting started with docs like code, and what changes AI and large language models might bring for docs processes. This Docs are In was originally published in video form on May 16, 2023.

James Governor, co-founder of RedMonk talks to Gerald Venzl about Oracle Database 23c Free. RedMonk is all about developers. As industry analysts we occasionally provide a quote for a press release and for the launch of 23c Free I described it as a “radical departure”. This video is about why. The influence of developers on technology decision making is greater than it ever was. So we moved from a model which was the historical top down purchasing led adoption of technology into one where the engineers were the practitioners, much more influential in those choices. Oracle 23c Free is a radical departure because for the first time Oracle has given developers, rather than enterprise IT buyers, the bits first. The model here is let's take all of the new bits, all of the new functionality, get it in the hands of developers first and let them make the market, for example it might be -- a Spring Developer needs to understand how the database is going to work with the applications they're building. Framework support is so important in developer ecosystems. So someone in the ecosystem can really be building before they even think about any purchasing decisions. How significant was the decision to lead with the developer edition? In the end it had to be approved by Larry Ellison, himself. We also talk about JSON support, and Oracle's attempts to make JSON a first class citizen in its architectures, enabling great support with common management models for both document/hierarchical and schema oriented SQL applications. The question is will a free database that supports both document and relational models, with high performance and maintainability, turn the dial for new developer adoption? This RedMonk Conversation was originally published in video form on May 23, 2023.

When it comes to highly opinionated marketing, driving the outrage button, we can't think of a more resonant recent campaign than Humanitec's DevOps is dead, long live Platform Engineering! In this video though we come to discuss platform orchestration and dynamic configuration management. So - a conversation between James Governor, co-founder of RedMonk, and Drew Oetzel, senior customer success engineer at Humanitec. What's the interplay between platform orchestration and platform engineering? Why should platform engineering care about this? What even is wrong with the current state of the art in configuration management? The truth is everybody does some platform engineering; everybody has some form of platform engineering. And at companies like Adobe or Google it can be really slick but at medium sized organisations, it might just be a couple of people clicking around in AWS. As Corey Quinn calls it “ClickOps” Congratulations. You're the platform engineering solution. You get to manually set something up as you go through tickets. According to Humanitec, at the heart of what a platform orchestrator does is it shuffles config files. So it's shuffling Terraform scripts, it's shuffling Helm charts, it's shuffling Kubernetes, YAMLs. Essentially undifferentiated heavy lifting. We discuss the current state of the art, but also what kind of tooling might offer a better, more automated experience for platform engineering teams. How we can avoid config file and script sprawl and focus on our jobs, automating the tedious interactions between dev and ops. Platform Engineering is about standardisation by design, and that happens as part of the process. Golden paths, platform orchestration, and dynamic configuration management. This RedMonk Conversation was originally published in video form on May 24, 2023.

In this RedMonk Conversation between Stephen O'Grady and Anurag Gupta, founder and CEO of Shoreline, the focus is on the potential impact of generative AI on infrastructure. "It's gonna be a game changer." They highlight the challenges faced by those responsible for maintaining operational stability and incident response, such as the lack of reliable and up-to-date information available on platforms like Stack Overflow and Confluence wikis. They also discuss how generative AI can address these challenges by synthesizing data into short, accurate answers, and enabling follow-up questions. The conversation also emphasizes the risk of hallucinations or incorrect responses, while ensuring the reliability of generative AI systems through testing. Anurag concludes with an explanation that curation can help enhance confidence in generative AI and unlock its full potential in infrastructure management. This RedMonk Conversation was originally published in video form on June 22, 2023.

In a world where it is increasingly important for organizations to have well-built software, why is it that the industry tends to look down on the traditional role of the software architect? Amir Rapson, co-founder and CTO of vFunction, joins Rachel Stephens to talk about the future of software architecture, how we can make the architecture role more relevant and grounded in reality, and how we can help organizations make more sound architecture decisions. This RedMonk Conversation was originally published in video form on July 10, 2023.

In this RedMonk Conversation between Stephen O'Grady and John Amaral, CEO and co-founder of Slim.AI, the two discuss the idea of “shifting left,” or moving security tasks earlier in application development workflows. In particular, they examine not just the perceived benefits, but the costs to “shifting left” and what to do about it. This RedMonk Conversation was originally published in video form on July 12, 2023.

In this conversation, RedMonk analyst Kate Holterhoff discusses Embrace's State of Mobile Experience Engineering Report with Andrew Tunall, VP and Head of Product at Embrace.io, and Virna Sekuj, Product Marketing Manager at Embrace.io. They review Embrace's research detailing mobile end users' and builders' perspectives of performance issues and app experiences. This RedMonk Conversation was originally published in video form on July 26, 2023.

This episode of the Docs are In features the most docs (and Georgia Tech references) yet, as Dr. Liz Hutter (Assistant Professor, University of Dayton) and Dr. Halcyon Lawrence (Associate Professor, Towson University) stop by to discuss some of the crucial work they are doing on the academic side of technical communication. Topics include a critique of the “grand narratives” common to the ways we talk about technical innovation (such as AI), a case study documenting Georgia Tech's CS Tech Comm course sequence, and a little backstory into how both Liz and Halcyon landed on their career paths. This Docs Are In was originally published in video form on July 25, 2023.

In The Taylor Swift Episode of The Docs Are In, Kelly speaks with Dr. Casey Alane Wilson: a former Georgia Tech colleague and current Assistant Professor of English at Francis Marion University (and also, clearly, a Swiftie) about her first-year English course on “Taylor Swift as Text”. If you've spent hours on a virtual queue for Eras Tour tickets, pondered the literary references in Swift's songs, wondered why Swift is re-releasing her albums, or just want to hear how LLMs are affecting university classrooms, this episode is for you.

In this RedMonk Conversation, analyst Kate Holterhoff speaks with Tracy Lee, CEO at This Dot Labs, about trends in the frontend space. They discuss the JavaScript Ecosystem, focusing on frameworks and runtimes, as well as the future of Developer Relations, including an overview of This Dot Lab's DevRel City. This RedMonk Conversation was originally published in video form on November 6, 2023.